


before the otherness came and i knew its name

by thepensword



Series: like real people do (and other monstrosities) [2]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Daisira and Jonmartin are mentioned but they're not the focus so i'm not tagging them, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Panic Attacks, Platonic Relationships, here i am again writing jon+daisy friendship i can't be stopped, uhh jon has a panic attack and daisy holds his face and sings idk what else to say, will i ever stop using hozier lyrics as titles? the answer is no
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:14:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22042381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepensword/pseuds/thepensword
Summary: Jon wakes up with no air in his lungs. Daisy is the one who finds him.
Relationships: Jonathan Sims & Alice "Daisy" Tonner
Series: like real people do (and other monstrosities) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1586599
Comments: 29
Kudos: 430





	before the otherness came and i knew its name

**Author's Note:**

> _before the otherness came_   
>  _and i knew its name_   
>  _the love, the dark, the light, the flame_
> 
> Warning(s): depiction of a panic attack, nightmares, suicidal ideation, mild self-harm, feeling of being watched, feeling of suffocation, mentions of violence involving blood, guns, knives, and burning, mention of jane prentiss and associated ickiness, general warning for jon's mental state.

Jon wakes up with fire in his eyes and dirt in his lungs and worms under his skin and he can’t breathe.

He doesn’t remember falling asleep. He doesn’t think he meant to fall asleep, slumped over his desk as he is, ink smudged on his face (he Knows without having to look in a mirror) and neck so stiff he can barely move it. He _knows_ he didn’t mean to fall asleep, because nowadays he only sleeps when he absolutely has to, even though he’s so exhausted all the time that he’s certain his blood has been replaced with lead, because this—

This always happens. Again and again and again. This _always happens_.

Jon is so tired of being afraid.

The air around him is filled with static, and he’s not sure how much of it is from the tape recorders whirring around him and how much is his own panicked mind trying to put some meaning to the blood rushing in his ears. He sees eyes everywhere, staring at him from the walls and the tapes and the pages on his desk. The room is too small and too big all at once; he is falling like Michael Crew, he is trapped again inside the coffin. The shadows in the corners are too deep, too dark, too _Dark,_ but he wishes at the same time that they were larger so that he could hide within them. Can the Eye see in the Dark? It couldn’t, in the Buried, it couldn’t when he fell through his chair at Michael Crew’s touch, it couldn’t through the blinding, searing pain of Jude Perry’s handshake—

Jon squeezes his hands into fists so tightly that it hurts. The bite of his nails against his palm is lesser than it should be; he’s been chewing at them again, without even noticing, and they’re too short to be useful for jarring himself out of the fear. He wraps his arms around himself and leans forward so that his too-long hair brushes the desktop and all he can see is the grain of the wood.

For half a second, it’s almost better. Then the grain starts to look like fractals and he can’t breathe again. Where did the air go? Why don’t his lungs work?

He wonders if he might actually be dying, this time. Bitterly, he wonders if that would really be so bad. At least it would be quiet, then. At least—

The desk was built in 1997. Gertrude bought it in 1998. She did so because the one before it was destroyed by an Avatar of the Flesh when she kicked them so hard they fell onto it. One of the legs had snapped clean off. She’d looked at the mess and thought it a shame, and then she’d gone to wash the blood from her hands. The blood was B negative. The sink was the same then as it is now, though the patch of mold is newer. The mold is cladosporium—black mold, non-toxic. Common inside and outside. The janitor quit months ago, when she’d walked in on Melanie sitting on a desk with her knife out. The janitor had four children, and her eldest had just had a baby. She was excited about this. She was knitting a blanket for her new grandchild. The blanket was pale yellow, like sunlight. The yarn was meron wool. 

Jon breathes in. It’s too shallow. He breathes out, and wishes he hadn’t. His lungs are empty. Everything is too loud, too much. He can’t—he can’t—

There are footsteps in the hall. He hopes it’s Jude Perry, come to finish him off. He hopes it’s Helen, finally bored of playing with her food. He bites his cheek so hard he draws blood and hopes and hopes and _hopes_ that it’s neither of those things, because he doesn’t want to die. He doesn’t want to die. He’s such a _coward_ , why can’t—he hopes. He hopes whoever it is, they’ll go away. Hopes they’ll come save him. ~~Hopes that it’s Martin.~~

Air. He needs air. He needs—he’s so hungry. He’s always so incredibly hungry. And tired, and sick, and _scared_. He needs to sit up. He needs to breathe. He needs to get ready in case whoever’s in the hall _is_ here to kill him, in case he needs to fight. He knows it would be useless to even try; he’d lose. He knows that. His arms feel brittle and weak, like his bones would snap if even a light breeze were to blow through. Jon laughs through the dizziness and thinks how lucky it is that this room has no windows.

A hand on the door, the creak of hinges. Jon bites his tongue and tries to look up, see who it is, but he can’t move. “Jon?” says someone from far, far away, and then, softer, “Oh.”

He knows that voice. He knows who that is. That’s...that’s Daisy. Daisy with the wild eyes and the gun in her hand, knife to his throat, teeth bared in a wild animal grin, Daisy with the blood and the Hunt and the—no. Daisy in the dirt, feeble and exhausted with terror, confused and lost, voice shaking, weak fingers reaching for his and so, _so_ lost, terrified, who is she?

No.

Daisy, after. Warm body by his side. Soft hair on his shoulder. Thin hand in his. Gentle breathing, no nonsense. Tired eyes. _Get over yourself._ That Daisy. His...his Daisy.

She’s standing in front of the desk. No, she’s kneeling on the floor by his side, hands hovering in the air near his face. His eyes meet hers for a half of a second before flitting away and she takes that as permission, apparently, and moves her hands closer until she’s cupping his cheeks in her palms. Holding his face, anchoring him to the warmth and solidity. Her lips are moving, he notices at a distance. She’s saying something. He tries harder to listen.

“Jon,” she’s saying. Her voice is soft, hushed. He likes that about her, how quiet she is, how she doesn’t yell at him or talk too loudly or too suddenly—he likes that. “Jon,” she says again. “It’s alright. Just breathe, okay? You’re here. You’re fine.”

Steady, calm. Not too fast. Not too urgent. Just...practical, and steady. Jon holds on to those words, that voice, to the feel of her hands cupping his face, and lets her pull him from the foggy panic. 

“Hey,” she says, when his breathing finally slows. They’re sitting on the floor now (when did that happen?) and her hands are still on his cheeks and he’s clutching her wrists like a lifeline. Gingerly he releases his grip, and her hands slip away from his cheeks to instead hold his hands. He clings back, and if it’s just a touch too desperate, she doesn’t say anything. 

“Mm,” he says. 

Her hands are so bony and fragile. His are too, he knows; neither of them is getting the feeding they need and they both know it, just as they are both determined not to talk about it. Jon marks that down as another thing he likes about her; both of them are monsters, and so they are the only two who can ever really understand what it is to stand at the precipice of losing all humanity. 

“What happened?” asks Daisy, still so soft. Her hands are facing upwards beneath his, and she starts to trace circles with her thumbs against the side of his wrist. Her fingers are long and spidery, and were probably always that way even before she started to starve, and Jon idly wonders if she ever learned to play piano. 

(Briefly, when she was ten. She hated it; the window was right behind her, and she could see the outdoors when she turned her head, which was much more exciting. There were parks to explore and earthworms to collect and bikes to ride, which were all much more fun than sitting here in her teacher’s stuffy studio room trying to force her fingers to play all the right notes at all the right times. Her parents gave up on her pretty quickly, after that, and she never touched a piano again until she was twenty-four, at Basira’s flat for the first time. Basira plays piano, and said she’d teach her; they sat on the bench together and Basira placed her hands over Daisy’s on the keys and pressed her fingers down just so, so that it was almost like she was playing the music herself. Basira’s hands are bigger, stronger, and they were warm. It had been raining outside. Basira had been so beautiful in the gray-blue light from the window, and this time Daisy did not care so much about the world outside the glass.)

No, that’s private. That’s not for him. Jon refocuses. There’s a scar on her thumb, right below the knuckle. She’d been trying to flip a knife and failed miserably. Basira had laughed, when she found out. 

“Nightmare,” says Jon. His voice cracks in his parchment-paper throat and it hurts. He swallows hard. The muscles of his shoulders and neck and back and chest and jaw are strung tight like coiled wires. It’s hard to relax that tension, but at least he’s breathing better now.

Daisy nods like she understands. He knows that she does.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.”

She nods again. “Fair enough. Do you want anything? Water? Tea?”

He thinks about it. On the one hand, his throat really _does_ feel like sandpaper. On the other hand, he doesn’t think he can stand just yet, and the thought of Daisy leaving him alone to go get it for him—no, best not. He shakes his head.

“Not—not yet.”

“Okay.”

They sit there like that, for a while. It’s hard to say what time it is; Jon had gotten rid of the analogue clock because the incessant ticking had driven him up the wall, and the small digital clock he’d replaced it with is out of sight up on his desk. He’s strangely okay with this, he finds. If time isn’t passing, then he can’t be getting any _more_ a monster, and all the dark and scary things of the world can’t be coming any closer. Reality has narrowed down to him and Daisy on the floor of his office, her hands holding his, not repulsed by the circular worm scars or the reminder of Jude Perry’s handshake, unafraid of his monstrosity. Just...steady. Calm. Grounding. 

After a pause, Daisy starts to sing. It’s some sort of quiet folk song, and not one he recognizes, but he finds he’s grateful for the sound of it. Daisy’s voice is low and soothing, just a bit raspy around the edges but smooth and pretty nonetheless, and it lulls Jon into a calm. Slowly, the tension in his shoulders releases, and he slumps forward, head hanging down and eyes drifting shut with the calm of it. Things are quieter, like this. The singing is hushed enough not to be too much but loud enough to drown out the rest of the noise, somewhat. And her hands in his—an anchor, he thinks. An anchor. 

If they’d been close like this, before the Buried, maybe he wouldn’t have needed to take out his rib. Is this what it’s like to have friends? He’d forgotten what it feels like. Is this what it is to be cared for?

It’s been too long. Martin cares for him, or at least he used to, but Jon had been so wrapped up in himself that he hadn’t noticed until it was too late. And now? He doesn’t know. Martin’s still here, somewhere, and hopefully he still cares—he’d left those tapes on the coffin, in any case, surely that meant something?—but it’s hard. Jon can’t see him. He misses Martin’s gentle smile, half-obscured by the steam from the mug of tea he’d undoubtedly be carrying, the cautious tone he’d used, as if Jon was a wild animal. He’d thought it patronizing at the time, just another annoyance, but now—

Now, he’s not so sure. And maybe it’s too late.

Daisy finishes her song. “Better?” she asks.

“Yeah. I...thank you.”

“Mm,” she hums, and squeezes his hand. “Ready to go get that tea now?”

Jon does a quick assessment. He’s calmer, now. His mind is quieter, and he’s breathing, and his shoulders are about as relaxed as they’re going to get. “Yes,” he says. “I think...yes.”

“Okay.” She stands, slowly, using the desk for support—her muscles are getting stronger, but they’re still weak. Jon doesn’t wait for her to offer him a hand up because he knows it wouldn’t turn out well and then she’d just feel bad about it, so instead he stands on his own, though he keeps his grip on her hand, and she makes no move to pull away. 

“Ready?” says Daisy. She means, _are you here? are you grounded? can you walk to the kitchen and not float away? can you hold yourself up if I hold you back?_ and she means _you came and got me in the coffin,_ and _i’ve seen the nightmares we share and heard you narrate the ones we don’t,_ and _if i hold you and you hold me, maybe we’ll survive like this_.

“Yeah,” says Jon. He means, _yes i am,_ and _thank you,_ and _you’re the only one left, thank you for not leaving me,_ and _maybe if we hold onto each other for long enough, we’ll remind each other how to be human._

Neither of them say these things, but they know. They know.

They walk to the kitchen hand in hand. 

**Author's Note:**

> me @ me: maybe write jonmartin or something?  
> me: no jon+daisy friendship platonic face holding  
> me @ me: k
> 
> thanks for reading! drop a comment or visit me on [tumblr](https://thepensword.tumblr.com)/[twitter](https://twitter.com/thepensw0rd)


End file.
